Seattle's first electric streetcar zipped up James Street in 1889

The old Fremont electrical substation wasn't declared a landmark, but there's no question that Seattle's streetcar system played a major role in the city's history.

According to "Routes: A Brief History of Public Transportation in Seattle" by historian Walt Crowley of HistoryLink.org, Seattle residents in the 1800s "had to navigate the town's muddy streets and dodge potholes deep enough to swallow up wagons (and at least one child)."

In 1884, entrepreneur Frank Osgood created Seattle's first rail line -- known as Hayburners because the cars were drawn along tracks by horses.

In 1887, 14 years after San Francisco's cable car started operating, J.M. Thompson, who pioneered the technology in that city, partnered with Fred Sander and other investors to start the Lake Washington Cable Railway. The railway ran cable cars from Pioneer Square to Leschi Park.

According to Crowley's book, "Cable railways quickly spread over the Seattle landscape: First Avenue, Queen Anne Hill, Madison Street, James Street, and a serpentine loop serving the West Seattle ferry terminal near Duwamish Head."

Following Thomas Edison's perfection of the light bulb in 1879, Osgood joined with other investors to electrify his rail line in Seattle.

"This plan was greeted with great skepticism and even alarm," Crowley wrote. "Detractors warned of runaway bolts of electricity arching through Seattle's rainy skies and zapping innocent pedestrians."

But on March 30, 1889, the first electric streetcar zipped up James Street.

"By 1892, Seattle boasted of some 48 miles of electric street rails and 22 miles of cable railways," Crowley wrote. "The (electric rail) lines pushed south to Georgetown and north to Ballard and the University District, and plans were laid for 'interurban' railways to Tacoma and Everett.

"In the process, developers platted new neighborhoods clustered around compact business districts at street railway intersections, built broad avenues such as Westlake, Madison and 15th Northwest, and opened attractive parks at Golden Gardens, Alki Beach and Guy Phinney's former Woodland Estate to lure residents and riders."

Crowley notes that a Boston firm, Stone & Webster, which had acquired a number of private utilities across the country, purchased Seattle's 22 competing street railways in 1886 as well as its main power company, Seattle Electric Light.

According to the application for historic status, the Fremont substation played an integral part in the rail system's move north. New technology allowed for transmitting electricity over long distances using alternating current. The substations converted high voltage AC into low voltage DC, which in turn was fed into the overhead wires that powered the streetcars.

The Fremont substation, built in 1902, was one of seven substations the company built between 1901 and 1915. The Fremont facility is the only one remaining.

Fremont was a strategic, central north-end location and enabled the streetcar system to expand into Fremont, Green Lake, Wallingford, Phinney, Greenwood and Ballard, according to the nomination for historic status.

The street railway and Interurban played a key role in developing Seattle's northern residential areas and business districts. Housing grew along the streetcar routes, and the housing booms in Fremont and Wallingford followed the expansion of service, according to the nomination.

By 1918, Crowley wrote, Stone & Webster was anxious to stop operating the railway in Seattle because it was losing money and faced competition from the automobile.

Mayor Ole Hanson offered to buy the line for $15 million -- about three times the system's market value, according to Crowley. "There were suspicions of an under-the-table deal, but a grand jury found no evidence of graft -- 'just slack business dealings' on Hanson's part," Crowley wrote.

The city could never overcome the interest payments to pay off the purchase of the line and continually lost money. The line was taken over by a new state transportation commission in 1939, which ordered buses to replace the streetcars, Crowley wrote. The last streetcar ran on April 13, 1941.

The nomination papers note that the substation was sold to the city in 1924. In 1929, the city built an addition to transmit more energy to the streetcar line. In 1955, it was sold to Doc Freeman, a marine business, and was used as a warehouse for the next four decades.